Authors: Kim Newman
On a visit to England, Cameron’s Dad met Minerva Beaton at a dinner party arranged by Alexia and wound up marrying the cellist. She reminded him of someone he had known as a young man. At the age of forty, Cameron was presented with a baby brother, Todd Nielson, upon whom everybody doted. When his own son was old enough to go to school, Alexia took up painting, working her way away from representational landscapes into suggestive abstracts based on the British countryside. Her work was too unconventional for immediate popular acceptance, but Cameron could tell how good she was, and was supportive even when she was discouraged. Anne and Dad both bought her paintings and displayed them prominently, and Cameron used his fee from a sanitary napkin commercial to finance an exhibition in London. Alexia was critically acclaimed, and several major galleries purchased her, but she did not become immediately collectible. She joked that she would only make money fifty years after she was dead, and he told her that money did not matter.
Cameron went to a lot of receptions, private views, book launches, first night parties, movie premieres and testimonials. His father, sister, wife and stepmother – Minerva became a much-in-demand soloist and had a big-selling jazz-classical crossover album – were always being honoured, and he always tried to turn out to support them. He got used to people asking him ‘and what do
you
do?’ He needed less and less to work, his commercial and film scores earning him a steady residual income. He did not miss his music, and could barely remember his performing days. Alexia and Cameron III gently chided him for his whistling habit, and he developed an aversion to his own work. Even when Alexia, who remained a young woman even as her hair silvered, tried to point out the strengths of his pieces he mentally tuned out. He had spent his life designing inoffensive wallpaper, he realized, and he was not really ashamed of that.
Cameron III asked for a guitar for his thirteenth birthday. Cameron wanted to give him a computer, but Alexia prevailed and soon the house was full of twangs and scales again. His son was obsessive about music, mastering classical, folk and rock modes with alarming rapidity. At sixteen, he put together his first group and, with a cash present from his grandfather, put out a record of his own songs. It got a lot of airplay from John Peel, and was written up extensively by the music press. A major company signed him up, and he had a series of top ten hits while building a serious reputation. Elvis Costello called him a genius, and Jonathan Demme made an in-concert film of his appearance at the Hollywood Bowl. Cameron III was embarrassed by the
Smash Hits
following and tried not to be a teen idol, whereupon he was celebrated all the more. Cameron knew how good his son really was, and encouraged him to break free of the pop straitjacket. Cameron III recorded duets with Stevie Wonder, David Byrne, Frank Sinatra and Kiri Te Kanawa. Then, he wrote a West End musical based on his aunt’s
Remembering Judi
and it transferred to Broadway, with Nina Kenyon making an impressive singing debut in her original role, finally outgrossing everything written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. On
The Tonight Show
, Johnny Carson did a whole monologue on the theme of, ‘yes, but who is Cameron Nielson
the Second
?’
Todd Nielson became a medical researcher, and finally did something about the ageing process. Their father was one of the first beneficiaries, and the whole family was able to gather at his 100th birthday party. Cameron talked with Minerva, who was being magnanimously tolerant of her husband’s much-publicized affair with Nina Kenyon, and with Anne, who was well into the tertiary stage of her fourth marriage (to Didier Bishopric, a society restaurateur) and just back from the Betty Ford clinic after a spell of amphetamine dependency. The family had asked him to compose a tune for the party, but he had declined. He did not do that any more. Finally, his son stepped in and wrote a song, ‘Not Out’, that would become an anthem for the new generation of active centenarians. However, thanks to a nervous disorder, Cameron Nielson III was unable to play at the party and, at the last minute, Cameron agreed to step in. After his son’s band, joined for the occasion by Minerva, played ‘Not Out’, with Nina handling the vocal, Cameron sat at the piano. Everybody sang ‘Happy Birthday to You’, drowning him out. It was a great occasion.
Cameron III’s condition got worse, and his uncle Todd recommended specialists. Alexia was tormented, and poured her feelings out on canvas, producing some of her best work. Cameron spent a lot of time sitting at his piano with the lid down, his fingers resting on the wood, whistling unconsciously. The specialists tried increasingly radical treatments, but his son did not recover. In the nursing home, Cameron III wrote an album’s worth of his very best material, railing against the darkness that was crowding in on him. At the funeral, Cameron’s stepmother played the cello while he stood with his arm around Alexia, feeling drained and empty.
Anne overdosed alone in her penthouse, describing herself in her last note as ‘just another dead junkie’. Their father wrote a tragic play about his daughters, and Nina, grown old enough, played ‘Amy’, the character based on Anne. There were characters equivalent to Victoria Page, Judi and Todd, but no one in
An American Family
resembled Cameron. There were new arts by now, shared dreams that could be shaped by the skilled. Susan, Anne’s daughter by Didier, became one of the first geniuses of the form, moulding her night fantasies into unforgettably affecting tapestries of emotion and narrative.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York held a major retrospective of Alexia Nielson’s paintings, but his wife did not live to see it. She succumbed to an unexpected cerebral haemorrhage at the easel two weeks before the opening. Her last, unfinished work was uncharacteristic: a portrait of her husband, prepared as a birthday surprise. He insisted it be exhibited, although it lacked a face. Several journalists who covered the event assumed that Alexia was Cameron Nielson’s daughter and that he, despite his name, had married into the family.
Hugh Farnham was discovered in a retirement home in Florida, living under an assumed identity, obsessively chewing on his rusks. He agreed to a televised debate, hosted by Dan Rather, with Cameron Nielson Sr. Farnham was still feisty on the show, but Cameron Nielson, looking younger now than his son, was as skilled as a great matador, and finally evened the score with his former tormentor, driving him to tearful contrition. Waving a fist at the camera, Cameron Nielson recited the names of those blacklist casualties he had avenged at last. At the reception after the show, Todd, learning for the first time of the ancient history of his family, spat in Hugh Farnham’s face. The old inquisitor slunk into the night, spittle still dripping from his cheek.
Cameron, needing nothing, sat around the house, surrounded by other people’s books and music and art. A journalist interviewed him for a book about his family, and when
The Nielsons
appeared, it made no mention at all of his professional life. He did not mind.
He whistled, tunelessly. Alone, with no worries, he whistled. The whistling became louder, more piercing, more painful.
Sitting at his piano, he howled. He looked down and saw he had battered his fingers bloody against the wooden lid.
He was coughing.
The whistling sounded like feedback, and his hammering on the piano became a dying round of applause. He was in the light, but there was darkness all around.
One of the perils of dreaming too much was that you got flashbacks afterwards. He tried to clear the phantoms from his head and grasp reality.
He looked up and saw Minerva at her cello, and Alexia, young and alive again, in the wings.
He was not sitting at a piano. It was a theremin.
The whistling stopped, and the music began.
H
is hands hovered above the instrument, refusing to move, but the opening notes of the symphony came from the theremin.
Nobody noticed that he was not contributing. Tapes cut in and overlaid the unearthly siren-call of the electroacoustic instrument, and Minerva’s cello answered the melodic tonality with a delicately offhand echo.
Cameron was sweating. His hands were stuck in space, a foot away from the theremin. He felt as if he were pressing against a strong, polarized magnetic force.
But the theremin played its part by itself, as if it were programmed to.
The
Telemachus Symphony
swelled. The audience were hypnotized by the piece, each member, even those cynical about ‘so-called “modern” music’, knew they were present at a historic event. This was a première that would be remembered forever.
It was for Judi, Cameron decided. He must make that clear to the press. And for Dad.
Now, perhaps, they would understand.
His wrists began to ache, and his nails were empurpled with blood.
Anne. He must tell Anne.
He was not a total ice-cube. This music proved that.
The symphony continued, greater than anything he had ever done. It was greater than him. He was not needed any more.
His hands were released, and he dropped them to his lap. The theremin was playing itself with passion, with feeling. For the first time, he understood his own work. His face was wet with tears.
Minerva’s solo came and went. The trick with the watches was more than a technical stunt, it actually worked in the context of the piece, sucking the audience even further into the spell.
Quietly, humbly, Cameron took off his headset and set it down on the floor. He slipped off his stool and backed away from the theremin stand. No one noticed. The music had them all.
He turned. A single globular tear crept from the white blank of Telemachus’ eye and ran down the giant mask.
Alexia was sobbing gently in the wings, stifling herself into silence. The music went on, and on.
Cameron left the stage, unremarked, and stepped into a carpeted, brightly-lit corridor. He could still hear his music, as if it were very far away.
He needed a cigarette.
He felt light-headed, as if he had been awake for days on end.
Looking for a concession stand, he turned a corner. The bogeyman was waiting for him.
It was a long time since he had seen Mr Whistle. They had both grown up. Mr Whistle’s clothes had grown in size with him. He was a tall, broad man now, but he still wore knickerbockers and velvet. His face was different, almost human, but he still had a shark’s mouth.
‘Hello, Cam,’ he whistled. ‘Long time, no see…’
Cameron felt small again. The music was fading. Mr Whistle seemed to be growing to giant size, his huge head scraping the ceiling. He was forced to bend at the waist, looming over him.
‘You have such an interesting family,’ he said. ‘So varied, so talented…’
Cameron remembered his dream, remembered the thickly-populated nightmare life he had led, trailing off into a bland and dusty future.
Mr Whistle smiled, teeth cutting his lips. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tore away a ragged stretch of skin.
‘Just think of me as the Ghost of Cameron Yet to Come…’
Could he hear laughter from the auditorium? He was clutched by dread.
Was it all coming true?
‘We stand at a crossroads, Cam,’ Mr Whistle said. ‘You, and your entire family. You know how I served your father, and let him live. You know how I loved your sister, and made her die. They each had a choice. As do you…’ He was held fast again, his whole body wrapped in an invisible field.
‘And Anne?’ he asked.
‘Her too. I’m dealing with her even as we speak. As a ghost, I’m not really here. I could tear you in two, but I’m not really here. It’s one of my many talents.’
Cameron did not doubt his old bogeyman. He remembered Mr Whistle’s ways.
‘You’re whistling, little boy,’ the Monster told him.
He was. He could not stop himself.
His half-heard symphony was a background for his tuneless whistle.
‘You know what I do to little boys who whistle?’ Cameron was a child again, the hell of life before him. Growing up, exams, acne, practice, arguments, girls, alienation, scales. He could not go through it all again.
‘I take their voices!’
The whistle died in Cameron’s throat.
‘That’s better. You won’t need to speak. This is a yes or no question. You can nod or shake your head.’
Cameron realized that Mr Whistle looked a little like Hugh Farnham. He was a bogeyman for all the family.
‘Consider yourself lucky. I’ve given you all a choice, but you’re the only one who is getting it straight, all cards on the table. There are no subtle, metaphorical struggles here. This is a simple deal.’
Cameron tried to hear his symphony, strained his ears for it. The music was there, but very faint.
‘You’ve seen a possible future, stretching out from this evening. I can’t guarantee it will be exactly like that, but you must have got the picture. You can expect a long and happy life if you give up serious music. Simple, isn’t it? Which would you rather died, you or your music? You know how your father chose. He has had the benefit of a fine son and beautiful daughters, but there have been no more great plays.’
The music was growing louder. It was inside his head, but throughout the building too. He tried to get a fix on it. It was strong and clean. It expressed the feelings he had never allowed himself. He could not let it go.
‘So, let’s get this clear. Nod your head if you want to live, without music…’
Cameron held still.
‘Live? Die? Music? Happiness? It doesn’t mean much to me. I get mine either way.’
Mr Whistle rested a large hand on Cameron’s shirtfront. He flexed his fingers. Cameron felt an electrical tingle.
He had decided. Not until now had he really known how much it all meant to him. He was older now than Mozart had been when he died. He still had a lot more to write but, considering that he was bowing out with
Telemachus
, he thought that he would not leave a negligible
oeuvre
behind him.
‘Well, Mr Ice-cube…? What can I do?’